Email and SMS notifications

Email and SMS notifications

Use email notifications to send selected users email or SMS notifications about specific
activities in the system, such as updates to incidents or change requests.

Email notifications allow administrators to specify:

When to send the notification

Who receives the notification

What content is in the notification

Troubleshooting steps to take when a ServiceNow instance does not receive email

Additional email notification options are available. Users can subscribe to notifications,
and administrators can make some notifications mandatory.

Administrators also have the option of converting existing email notifications to a rich
HTML format. This format provides several advantages, including:

Raw HTML content is converted into a WYSIWYG format.

The content can be edited in a feature-rich HTML editor.

Mail scripts are condensed into a single, easy-to-read line that can be reused in
multiple email notifications.

To prevent broken links, items like images and incidents, that are linked with URLs
relative to an instance are converted to absolute links. For example, if an incident is
linked using a relative URL, the link is converted to an absolute link.

Note: The rich HTML format is the default for all new email
notifications.

Note: Instances cannot send or receive encrypted email messages. The system strips out the
body of the encrypted email because it cannot process the encrypted content in plain text or
HTML.

If you want to change how the instance processes incoming email, see Inbound email actions. See Email logs for examples of messages the system displays when notifications or inbound email actions
are not processed.

The Diagnostics and Connection page displays information about the current state of your email configuration. This page includes status on email properties, scheduled jobs, and email account connections that affect how your instance receives and sends email.